The present invention is related to the field of representing and accessing information. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a method and/or apparatus for effectively organizing displaying information using a PC or non-PC information appliance such as a cell phone, other intelligent telephone, Personal Digital Assistant, information-enabled television (WebTV), etc.
A number of techniques have been proposed and developed to use logic devices or information appliances to index, search, annotate, and access information. The need for such techniques has increased dramatically with the advent and increased use of the WWW and extensive data banks of information available on private networks (intranets) or storage devices (such as memory or readable media such as DVD, disks or CDs).
In addition, the expected growth in smaller screen, non-PC information appliances to access the Internet or other information sources will outdate typical methods for accessing information today. For example, many users access or find information on the web using a search engine (such as Altavista, Excite, Google, Lycos, Infoseek, etc.) or through an index list (such as Yahoo). While these services have given tens of millions access to information on the WWW, there are a number of known shortcomings. Generally, all of the services work by providing a listing of sites in response to user input. This listing may include just the name of the sites or may include the name and some additional information, such as the title, the first line of text, and/or some line of text in context with the search word. If the user wishes to learn additional information about a site, the user indicates the URL from the site list and opens the first page of the site. However, depending on the design of the site, the user may have to access several different pages and view or hear a substantial amount of text in order to find information of interest.
In cases where a user is on a small display device, such as a cell phone with a display or a PDA or audio device, opening a web site to scan and locate information of interest can be very difficult. In addition, accessing sites through typing in a URL is not practical for small screen, handheld devices. Reformatting websites for such devices generally requires a content publisher to perform an entire reformatting of web sites or pages specifically for a small screen device.
Some more recently developed technologies have attempted to present web pages to users with additional information.
InXight is designed to present a list of web pages and to display an executive summary to the right of the list when a mouse is placed over a listed URL.
AvantGo and other companies offer xe2x80x9cWeb Clippingxe2x80x9d which is a way for publishing in text-only format that will fit on a Personal Digital Assistant. This service works as a means for re-publishing/re-formatting content for the new devices.
IBM""s Intelligent Miner technology classifies organization types and people found in documents and gives standard long summaries of pages.
PassCall (additional information available at http://www.passcall.com/)and others take existing Web pages made for PCs and determine how to display the entire content (i.e. all of the text) of a webpage on a cell phone.
What is needed is a method and/or apparatus that will allow users to quickly review content sources to find information of interest.
Prior Patents
Several prior patents have been located that may be related to the invention or may provide background information. Listing of these patents here should not be taken to indicate that any formal search has been completed or that any of these patents constitute prior art. Discovered patents include:
U.S. Pat. No. 5,864,863 (Burrows), Method for parsing, indexing and searching World-Wide Web pages;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,884,035 (Butman, et al.), Dynamic distributed group registry apparatus and method for collaboration and selective sharing of information;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,206 (Sotomayer), Computerized method and system for qualified searching of electronically stored documents;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,748,930 (Prkash), Method and apparatus for interfacing with a host computer system sharing tasks with another user on a client computer system;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,708,825 (Sotomayer), Automatic summary page creation and hyperlink generation;
U.S. Pat. No. 5,649,186 (Ferguson), System and method for a computer-based dynamic information clipping service.
The present invention is involved with organizing information or content in a way that provides new features to a user and that allows for effective user access from different devices with different device characteristics.
In specific embodiments, information can include Web pages or Web sites. Information can also include other information that is stored, transmitted, or presented via a computing device or information appliance, such as a PC, cell phone, Web TV or other information appliance or browsing device.
In further specific embodiments, according to other aspects of the invention, the information organization paradigm of the present invention provides an effective mechanism for storing a pre-browsed and concise summary of information available in hyperlinked format.
In further specific embodiments, and according to other aspects, the information paradigm of the present invention is involved with an independently innovative system for automatically extracting summary notes from information sources in a way that allows presentation in a flexible manner.
In further specific embodiments, and according to other aspects, the information paradigm of the present invention is involved with an independently innovative system for improving user searching by searching in extracted information notes rather than in raw source documents.
In further specific embodiments, and according to other aspects, the information paradigm of the present invention allows mock surfing or presurfing of extending information by automatic link surfing.
In further specific embodiments, and according to other aspects, the information paradigm of the present invention allows grouping extracted notes into folders for easier user access.
In further embodiments, the paradigm of the present invention may be used along with other innovative components to enhance searching, automatic parsing, pre-browsing of linked documents, etc. These additional and independent innovative components are not necessary for operation of the invention as just described and will not be present in all embodiments.
The invention and various specific aspects and embodiments will be better understood with reference to the following drawings and detailed descriptions. In different figures, similarly numbered items are intended to represent similar functions within the scope of the teachings provided herein. In some of the drawings and detailed descriptions below, the present invention is described in terms of the important independent embodiment of a system operating on a data network. This should not be taken to limit the invention, which, using the teachings provided herein, can be applied to other situations, such as cable television networks, wireless networks, etc. For purposes of clarity, this discussion refers to devices, methods, and concepts in terms of specific examples. However, the invention and aspects thereof may have applications to a variety of types of devices and systems. It is therefore intended that the invention not be limited except as provided in the attached claims.
Furthermore, it is well known in the art that logic or digital systems and methods can include a wide variety of different components and different functions in a modular fashion. Different embodiments of the invention can include different mixtures of elements and functions and may group various functions as parts of various elements. For purposes of clarity, the invention is described in terms of systems that include many different innovative components and innovative combinations of innovative components and known components. No inference should be taken to limit the invention to combinations containing all of the innovative components listed in any illustrative embodiment in this specification.
The functional aspects of the invention, as will be understood from the teachings herein, may be implemented or accomplished using any appropriate implementation environment or programming language, such as C++, Cobol, Pascal, Java, Java-script, ActiveX, dynamic HTML, COM, etc.
All references, publications, patents, and patent applications cited herein are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.